CAIRNS BOOK REVIEW: Marrying Anita by Anita Jain (Bloomsbury)

Subtitled ‘A Quest of Love in the New India’, Marrying Anita is part-biography, part-intellectual thesis and wholly entertaining.

Anita Jain is desperate to get married.

A good Indian girl bought up mainly in the United States, her indulgent parents have put up with her aimless search for a husband the ‘modern way’, the random dates, college friends and workmates.

Finally realising that there might be something to arranged marriages Anita moves herself to India in search of a modern, yet Indian, husband.

Thanks to the recent Olympics, China has been receiving more of the pop-cultural interest but India is developing just as quickly and is home to similar massive cultural and economic change.

As a journalist Anita is able to explain these changes and how they are affecting India’s youth clearly and sympathetically.

What Anita discovers once she reaches Delhi is that the dichotomy of east and west is alive and well and that she is going to have the same sort of problems find the right man as she did in New York.

Readers follow Anita through her trials and tribulations of finding a flat – Indian owners don’t like to rent to single women – meeting the pop-culture generation – none of them want to get married – and dealing with some of her past relationships.

Marrying Anita is a fascinating look into one woman’s life but it also opens a window on the second most populous country in the world.

Does she find her mythical perfect man? You’ll have to read the book to get that answer, but it’s an enjoyable search.

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